Fire Dept. cuts seen as a step backward

When the Oceanside City Council sits down Wednesday to trim $10 million from its budget, a choice will be to cut the service time of one of its four ambulances.

That, along with a proposed reduction of three support staff members, would decrease the Fire Department budget by $934,000, on top of $530,000 in fire service cuts approved in May.

Some city officials say those reductions will turn the clock back on the Fire Department, which beefed up its operations after a 2007 study by a consultant found that the department needed to improve its response to emergency calls.

That report by Citygate Associates, a firm that evaluates city operations, became the department's blueprint for improving the quality and speed of emergency service.

“The current staffing is inadequate to cover the physical size of Oceanside to deliver good outcomes equitable across all the neighborhoods,” the study said.

“Oceanside has both a speed and ‘weight of attack’ problem,” it added, meaning the response was slow and inadequate.

Mike Mathai, the fire division chief in charge of operations, said that since 2007 the department has improved its “turnout time” — the time between when a call comes in and when firefighters leave the station — and its management structure.

The city also built and relocated Fire Station 7, on Mission Avenue near Foussat Road, to better cover neighborhoods where response was slow. That station opened last year.

But with the cuts approved in May and those on the table, Mathai said, “I would say we are no longer in compliance with the recommendations of Citygate.”

He noted that the study determined that four ambulances were adequate in 2006, when the city had 11,333 emergency calls. But last year there were 17,000 calls, he added.

Mathai said a system called “boundary drop,” whereby the closest fire crew from Vista, Carlsbad or Oceanside will respond to an emergency regardless of which city it's in, has improved response times. Removing an ambulance from service will weaken the overall response when firefighters are on more than one call simultaneously, he said.

Councilman Jerry Kern, along with colleagues Rocky Chavez and Jack Feller, voted at a workshop last month to proceed with the cuts, which could entail eliminating 50 jobs citywide.

The council will meet Wednesday at City Hall to discuss the fire cuts as a package of reductions to address a two-year, $10 million shortfall.

Kern said he wasn't so concerned about the Citygate report because “we (the council) never adopted that.”

Asked if he agreed with the recommendation to cut an ambulance, Kern said: “This was the fire chief's recommendation. Why didn't he do something else?”

Kern is the target of a recall backed by the firefighters and police unions, who object to his positions on staffing and benefits.

Mayor Jim Wood said the proposed cuts are political payback by Kern, Feller and Chavez. The unions opposed Feller's re-election last year and backed Wood over Chavez in last year's mayoral election.

But Kern said that's not so, and that the city manager has identified a $10 million budget hole that has to be covered.

“It makes it doubly hard because of the recall,” Kern said.

He pointed out that the ambulances aren't the first to respond to an emergency. Fire engines are first in, with paramedics on board. Ambulances are called if they're needed to transport a patient.

Nevertheless, in the Sept. 30 budget workshop, Fire Chief Terry Garrison indicated that he didn't favor the cuts, saying they would reduce the number of firefighters on duty at one time from 33 to 31, which is anathema to the Citygate study.

The study said all the ambulance crews are necessary to ensure that the department can respond to multiple emergencies.

“Given the low occurrence of building fires in the city, and the strong mutual-aid unit support from the neighboring cities, Oceanside can typically field enough firefighters at a serious fire,” the study said. “But doing so during periods of ambulance calls means the city really cannot field a force to two major events at once.”

“I can't afford to lose any more staff,” Garrison told the council at the workshop, noting that the council cut a battalion chief and two captains in May.

“You gave me a cavity, and this is a root canal,” Garrison said of the latest cuts on the table.

The proposal would eliminate overtime for firefighters called in to staff an ambulance when others miss their regular shifts.

Kern said all four ambulances would be in service if all the firefighters showed up for work, but Mathai noted that the way the department ensures that all its shifts are covered is through overtime. The city deliberately doesn't over-hire because it costs too much, he said.